Blue Grass Fish and Wildlife Area

[Moose1am]

Fished Otter pit yesterday. Air temps in low 70's and water surface temp was about 57 deg. Up from 49.1 deg the other day. Two nice days of sunshine and rain three days ago brought the surface water temps up.

Larger than normal female and male White Crappie are stagging in 18ft to 10ft of water along dropoffs. Time is getting close to where they will head into the shallows to spawn.

I only fished for about an hour or two. Got a late start as I was still working on my boat that afternoon.

Fished with TeeZur Jig head (3/32oz) Chartruese and a BPS Squirmin Squirt White Lighting 1.5" long jig body and added a small 1" long chub live minnow.

I fished tightline as it was pretty calm and the winds died down after 5 pm. Slow trolled around some submerged brush on the deeper edge of the drop off. Fish were close to the bottom with some activity at the surface after 6 pm. I didn't catch any fish at the surface. They were probably after hatching insects as there are a lot of them now. I saw some of those water beatles that skim across the surface all the time. There are lots of midges hatching and flying around also. I am willing to bet that some of the fish that I saw at the surface may have been crappie. Not sure as I could not get them to bite on a float and fly set at only 2ft deep.

Boy yesterday was a very nice day to be outside.

I suspect that the Patoka Lake Slabs are on the move and starting to head to the mouth of the creek channels that lead back into the bays.

I am at 38.00.00 deg lat and the tulip trees, pussy willow trees are blooming. Dogwoods are not quite ready to bloom ..yet. Give them another week or two if the weather does not turn warm and speed them up. Soil temp was around 14 deg C the other day in my yard. That is 57 deg F for you non scientists. LOL BTW that is exactly the water surface temp too at Otter Pit yesterday

[Moose1am]

Water temps cooled down from two days ago out over the drops at the surface. I measured the surface temps out over 20ft of water at 55.1 deg F. The shallow waters up in the North part of the pit were warmer in 6 ft of water. I got 60 deg F at the surface in the shallower water.

Crappie were caught staging and suspened 10ft down over twenty feet deep water. I had to work at getting them to bite. The jig had to be right in front of their nose which meant I needed to accrately figure out how deep they were and get my jig to that depth and try to control the boat speed.

Winds were strong today and I had to use the 5 out of 5 setting at times to hold position or to advance into the wind. Winds calmed down a lot after 4:30 PM. But at noon they were howling at 15 to 20 mph at times.

Air temps were in the mid 60's with lots of sunshine and clear skies.

I caught a few crappie by tightlining down to 10ft and then caught the rest on a float and fly seup with slip bobber.

They liked my Teezur Chartruse 3/16oz jig tipped with a small chub minnow.

Caught all my fish in stickups that were either submerged out in deep water or at 4 to 6 ft deep with some tops sticking out of the water. These are mostly small scrub trees that were there before the stripper pit filled up.

There was a current running though all the pits at BlueGrass Fish and Wildlife Recreational Area. By al the pits I mean Blue Grass Pit, Loon Pit and Otter pit.

I think I cleaned about 10 to 12 nice crappie. The female were full of eggs but I am thinking that they are still a few days away from spawing. Just looking at the eggs they don't appear to be fully rip. They should be much bigger (each egg in the sack)

[DmDuck]

Moose , Do they have decent ramps down there or are they carry in drop offs ? I have the 16' Monarch I'd like to put in someday down there or I can canoe it if I have to .
Maybe we can hook up sometime so you can show me around the area I've never been there ?

[Moose1am]

Hey Jim:

First yes they have very nice ramps. They are concrete ramps and they even have handicap access platforms and parking. No bathrooms other than the trees. Large gravel parking lot that will hold about 15 to 20 boats if everyone parks in the right way.

I destroyed my only depth finder tonight trying to repair a broken transducer cable. The cable must have shorted out on my trolling motor shaft after I fixed the wires and put the liquid tape on it. Evidently the tape was not dry and a wire came though and hit the metal on my trolling motor's shaft. Didn't help that I taped the wire to the shaft either. Anyway my depth finder was working with the other transducer but now all it does is read 8 ft deep and won't change modes anymore. I am sure that it's ruined. Oh well time for a new Humminbird Matrix I guess. LOL

There is a very nice campground that is less than a mile from the largest of the pits. BlueGrass Pit and the Camp ground is right down the road West of the Pits on Old Boonville New Harmony road. This road is connected to the I-164 bypass which is connected to I-64. I think that you get of I-64 at Exit 27 to go south on I-164 and then turn East onto Boonville Newharmony Road and the pit is on your left just less than a half mile off of I-164. The parking lot is on your left for Blue Grass Pit and that is the main parking lot with maps of the area at the Hunters Check in Station. Loon Pits North parking ramp is just down the road about 1/10 of a mile and that is on the South or on your left as you head East on Boonville New Harmony road.

Right now I am catching most of the crappie on Otter Pit which is further south of Loon pit. It can be reached from the Blue Grass pit by driving south on a gravel road to Kansas and then from Kansas on to Euler road.

If you go to the Blue Grass Pit's parking lot and get a map it will show you the roads, the parking lots and the boat ramps.

The camp ground is privately owned but very nice. They have hot water showers and electric charging stations for your boat if you to rent one.

Moose , Do they have decent ramps down there or are they carry in drop offs ? I have the 16' Monarch I'd like to put in someday down there or I can canoe it if I have to .
Maybe we can hook up sometime so you can show me around the area I've never been there ?

[Moose1am]

Jim:
I better tell you that there are no courtesy docks on these pits. You have to pull your boat up on the boat ramp or in the mud next to the ramp to park it while you park you truck. Now if you have someone there to drive your truck while you launch the boat it's much easier. I normally fish alone so I use a long 75ft long 3/8" poly rope to hold my boat to the boat trailer as it float away after I back down the ramp and stop real quick. That slide the boat off the boat trailer. The rope attached to the boat with a quick release hook and the other end of the rope I attach the same way to my boat trailer front end. I can pull the truck out and have the boat trailer clear the water at the ramp and then have a bit of slack rope left so that the truck does not yank the front of the boat too hard. LOL Then I can simply park the truck and put the parking brake on, jump out and grab the rope and pull the boat up to the ramp and tie her off and go park my truck. A simple push off the bank and I am fishing. Getting back on is a different story and that can be difficult in a wind with no gasoline motor.

I was told that if the winds kick up and you run out of juice on the trolling motor that you might get by with starting up the gasoline motor and ideling back to the ramp. I see the conservation officers at these pits each weekend so far. Last time out... Yesterday one showed up at Otter Pit and checked licenses of the bank fisherman. After he left there were hardly any people still fishing off the bank... Wonder if he scared them all off or wrote them tickets for not having a fishing license. I talked with Gordon Woods last week and he said that he wrote some tickets to people at Blue Grass earlier in the day for not having their fishing liscense with them.

Moose , Do they have decent ramps down there or are they carry in drop offs ? I have the 16' Monarch I'd like to put in someday down there or I can canoe it if I have to .
Maybe we can hook up sometime so you can show me around the area I've never been there ?